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Leaders meet to discuss WLRN’s future. Instead they ask about diversity and coverage.

Y2kTheNewOldies

Y2kTheNewOldies

Walk of Fame Participant
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article222659085.html

After a year of inactivity, Miami-Dade County school district leaders and an ad-hoc panel made little progress Wednesday in forging a path for the future of South Florida’s sole public radio news station.

The conversation surrounding the School Board’s tenuous and often tense relationship with WLRN, as the owner of its broadcasting license, instead delved into and at times criticized the station’s diversity of programming, donors’ influence and coverage area.

Four options are on the table and will ultimately go to the School Board for deliberation and approval: Stick to the status quo, which neither party seemed to favor; sell the broadcasting license, which would be subject to the district’s legal procedures; bolster the station’s community advisory board and increase its influence on the station, or create another nonprofit that would manage the station as a third-party entity.

WLRN has a news partnership with the Miami Herald, sharing office space with the newspaper staff in Doral, collaborating on some journalistic work and sharing some content.

A panel of community members and former journalists appointed by Superintendent Alberto Carvalho regrouped to go over the options since their last meeting in October 2017. The panel was created after the district in 2016 drafted a new operating agreement that would force 19 WLRN reporters and editors now employed by an independent nonprofit to reapply for jobs and work directly for the school district. It also opened the door for the district to dictate programming and broadcast content.

School district spokeswoman and chief communications officer Daisy Gonzalez-Diego said the panel tried to meet in April but was still waiting for reports on the matter. She said it was difficult working around the schedules of Carvalho and the panel members.

Friends of WLRN, the nonprofit fundraising arm for the station, has been in favor of either buying WLRN Radio or creating a separate nonprofit to manage the station. It commissioned a report with Public Media Co. that emphasized the importance of the station’s independence and valued the radio station at $12.1 million.
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Issues on the future of WLRN are at play here.
 
Terrible situation. The best situation is in the last paragraph. The non-profit Friends group should begin raising the money to buy the station. There are lots of great examples around the country, starting with WNYC, but also most recently KPLU in Seattle. A Friends group raised $7 million to buy the station from Pacific Lutheran University. That wasn't easy to do, but it solved the problem. There are less traumatic ways to handle it, but it looks like those options aren't available.
 
It's a touchy situation but in the end what does the Miami-Dade school board really want from the station? What exactly are the concerns they have over programming? Are they worried about the news department criticizing the district?
 
It sounds like the school board meeting to discuss the four options in the OP will take place next month. Should be a doozy.
 
There's nothing worse on WLRN as when they broadcast the school board meetings. <YAWN> And you have no idea who is talking.
 
K-Love would love to trade that horrible signal near Homestead for one that would cover the full market.
 
ai4i said:
K-Love would love to trade that horrible signal near Homestead for one that would cover the full market.
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I'm sure they would, but if that were to happen, NPR would have no outlet in a huge market. I can't imagine that would happen. Someone would step in and pay the school board for that signal to keep it public radio.
 
AMRocks said:
I'm sure they would, but if that were to happen, NPR would have no outlet in a huge market. I can't imagine that would happen. Someone would step in and pay the school board for that signal to keep it public radio.
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Someone would have to have a big wallet.
 
So long as codified beliefs in the supernatural are protected and even encouraged in this country the way they are, secular noncommercials will always be vulnerable to buyouts from EMF and their ilk.
 
WLRN is NOT going anywhere. Trust me when I say that. What will change is potentially their relationship with the School Board and the programming.

We may see the license transferred to another branch of the county (I don’t know what the rules are in Florida about transferring property to other county government agencies but my guess is it’s fairly easy). Another option is “The Friends of WLRN” listener buyback. KPLU out here in Seattle recently went that route as they were to be purchased by a competing public radio station. Regardless, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the school board ask for the full market value (even in an intra-government transfer) if they get to keep the proceeds.

The other question is: what happens to WLRN-TV? Do they keep plugging away as-is? Or are there sale options for them as well?

91.3 is an odd duck amongst public radio stations in big markets — programming-wise and ownership-wise...then again, South Florida is an odd duck amongst big radio markets.
 
seattlesarchiebunker said:
...then again, South Florida is an odd duck amongst big radio markets.
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You might mean because when you remove the number of people who never listen to English language radio,
the market becomes a shell of what its total numbers would suggest.
 
seattlesarchiebunker said:
91.3 is an odd duck amongst(sic) public radio stations in big markets — programming-wise and ownership-wise...then again, South Florida is an odd duck amongst big radio markets.
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As ai4i said, one has to consider the ethnicity of the market. 51% Hispanic, about 20% between African Americans and Haitians, and the most affluent Hispanic community in the US with higher household income than the hon-Hispanic white segment. There is a very different sense of community and a lot of NPR programming from the Northeast is just not going to be as relevant.

This is similar numerically to the NPR issues in LA: 45% Hispanic, 12% Asian, 8% African American and about 10% "other" first generation immigrants. No wonder NPR really under-performs in that market as well.
 
Not THAT big. Remember, a non-commercial FM doesn't go for nearly as much as a commercial FM. :)
 
DavidEduardo said:
There is a very different sense of community and a lot of NPR programming from the Northeast is just not going to be as relevant.
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Does the Miami School Board understand that? Who are they programming to?

NPR doesn't get involved in local stations. It's up to the stations to decide how much national programming they run.
 
TheBigA said:
Does the Miami School Board understand that? Who are they programming to?

NPR doesn't get involved in local stations. It's up to the stations to decide how much national programming they run.
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And even then I believe the station pays NPR to carry any program they produce.

I need to go back to my original question: what is the school board's concern with the programming on WLRN? As a casual listener it seems like they cover local and national affairs pretty well (I could do without BBC World Service overnight, truthfully. Classical would be nice) and I would think that if WLRN pays to carry the national shows it would only be possible because donors support them.

Whatever the Miami-Dade school board wants from their station it's not clear to me, unless it's a cynical move to manage the news coverage of the county government.
 
strangelove said:
I need to go back to my original question: what is the school board's concern with the programming on WLRN?
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The answer was in the OP: "The conversation surrounding the School Board’s tenuous and often tense relationship with WLRN, as the owner of its broadcasting license, instead delved into and at times criticized the station’s diversity of programming, donors’ influence and coverage area."

My sense is there's a culture clash between the school board and the donors. So they're programming to two very different audiences. More classical would likely not be a priority of the school board.
 
ai4i said:
Here!
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Classic 24 is pretty good, I believe it's the same service that was on the former WKCP when it was Classical South Florida. The classical channel from Radio Swiss is good as well, I switched to it after the station was sold. I'm just guessing but I think they reason they carry BBC after 1am is because it's either free or doesn't cost as much as an NPR offering.

Does the question of diversity of programming come down to serving the multicultural makeup of Miami and by extension South Florida? They do 30 minutes of Kreyol programming at 9pm on weeknights but I don't believe they do anything in Spanish. Are they looking for more programming that serves those communities?
 
strangelove said:
Are they looking for more programming that serves those communities?
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The answer might come from how the schools themselves serve those communities. If they have classes taught in Spanish, then by extension, they'd probably expect some radio programming in that language. Think of it from their point of view. It's not necessarily the way a typical radio station is programmed. It's also why at one time some non-com educational stations used block programming rather than format programming.
 
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